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concertina226 (2447056) writes "Online hacktivist collective Anonymous has announced that it is working on a new tool called Airchat which could allow people to communicate without the need for a phone or an internet connection — using radio waves instead. Anonymous, the amorphous group best known for attacking high profile targets like Sony and the CIA in recent years, said on the project's Github page: 'Airchat is a free communication tool [that] doesn't need internet infrastructure [or] a cell phone network. Instead it relies on any available radio link or device capable of transmitting audio.' Despite the Airchat system being highly involved and too complex for most people in its current form, Anonymous says it has so far used it to play interactive chess games with people at 180 miles away; share pictures and even established encrypted low bandwidth digital voice chats. In order to get Airchat to work, you will need to have a handheld radio transceiver, a laptop running either Windows, Mac OS X or Linux, and be able to install and run several pieces of complex software." And to cleanse yourself of the ads with autoplaying sound, you can visit the GitHub page itself.

In Huntsville, AL, there is a Seventh-Day Adventist college called Oakwood College that plays shitty gospel music on a radio station nominally on the lower part of the FM band, but their (large) transmitter is so badly tuned that it shits all over the lower part of the FM band -- and on people's land lines within a few miles. It's located in a very uneducated section of town, and some of the locals have said that they thought the gospel music was "something the phone company did, y'know, to be nice and give us something to listen to."

I haven't been back with my car in a while, so I have no idea if they've fixed it.

This is almost certainly illegal in the UK. Encrypyted comms over citizen/public radio bands is not allowed. Steganography would be required to carry an encrypted payload without being caught, but you'd still be breaking the law.

>Overt abuses like the GCHQ shutting down a news paper, and destroying its computer hardware because it suspects (without evidence, or trial) that the hardware contains US and/or British classified documents?

It didn't shut down the Guardian and it didn't destroy it's hardware.

They demanded the hardware. The Guardian said "No, we will destroy it first to protect our sources". So GCHQ said "Fine, we'll attend so we can be sure it's been destroyed.". The Guardian then did the destroying.

It's a nice idea, and arguably has done a lot to bring down many repressive governments and end many great injustices. The problem is that everyone believes themselves to be righteously protesting - and one man's justified cause is another's anarchy. Take the current Bundy fiasco: Bundy feels that federal land ownership is unjust, therefore he refuses to pay his grazing license (ie, tax). He also feels that protection for endangered species is an unjust law, therefore he ignores repeated court orders to stop grazing his cattle upon land which has herd density restrictions. To some, he is a hero - a brave protester, risking his freedom to strike a symbolic blow against a government out of control. To others, he is a redneck dick who won't pay his taxes and has no respect for the rule of law. It's all subjective.

The thing is though? The truth is typically someplace roughly in the middle.... EG. In Bundy's case, the truth is somewhere between his idea that federal land ownership is "unjust", and the idea that federal govt. should buy up huge swaths of land and just sit on them (for over 100 years at a time, in this instance, and probably many others) -- and then selectively enforce rules with an iron fist, when they suddenly deem it worthwhile.

So the "anarchy" brings attention to the initial problem, and *hopefully* brings about an end result of some modification to existing regulations, to improve things in the future for everyone.

It's pretty well documented in historical records that when the United States fought for freedom from England and the Revolutionary War began, there was a lot of this "over the top" behavior involved too. British soldiers, ordered to simply stand guard in certain areas, were spit on, had beer bottles thrown at them from nearby taverns, etc. -- in an attempt to provoke one of them to give in and fire a weapon. Bottom line? You can't really create effective change if you just sit quietly by and follow all the rules. The protesting/anarchy isn't usually 100% right, but it serves as a catalyst for change.

"and then selectively enforce rules with an iron fist, when they suddenly deem it worthwhile."10 years and a million dollars in fines? Suddenly?Dude even if you do not think the that government should own the land it sure as shooting did not belong to that rancher!And I would like that rancher to please pay his back rent and lower the deficit by a million dollars!.

The federal government owns more than 80% of Nevada (some sources say 87% but that's likely high). I'm not really going anywhere with that but I though it was astounding when I read it and think it's food for thought.

It's a desert. The government likely owns it because nobody else wants it. If they gave it away, people still wouldn't take it because they don't want to pay taxes on it.

What Bundy did, using someone's property without permission... where I grew up, that's called "tresspass" or "theft" or somesuch. If he wanted to protest, he could have not used the public land and put up signs saying so, or called his congresscritters, or did any of the other things that protesters do. Maybe even used it for one year w

Encryption is explicitly excluded in the regs. Doing so will actually have people tracking your location and gathering logs on what they find.

Only if you do it on a band that's popular enough to have people notice your transgressions. If you either use a sparsely-used band or use a band that amateur radio is a secondary user of, and it's quite likely that you could operate or some time without anyone reporting you. If you were to use the 900MHz/33cm band it's likely that your usage would be chalked up t

Considering the current generation of geeks is developing all the software defined radios used by Amateurs and with digital modes becoming a whole new area to play with, there's a lot of younger people involved.The older people have the contacts in government departments to get things done, the younger have the equipment to do a lot of the tracking all automatically.I know this from helping a group deal with some people being abusive on some bands in my area. They now have no radio gear and a few thousand d

Tracking down illegal transmissions is a mix of Geritol & Viagra for these 'Fox Hunters'.If done on the 11m CB bands, no one will care.Since no one uses the 70cm frequencies, it could be done there and still no one will ever notice.

Use of this would (to my knowledge) require some sort of HAM licensing - and said regulations would have restrictions on things like frequencies (i.e. the whole "FM Pirate Radio" thing discussed on the README) or encrypted data.

So the NSA couldn't necessarily snoop your data - but the FCC could (and if you pissed the NSA or FBI off, probable WOULD) come after you for these types of violations. They couldn't get your by IP address - but if your were operating this from a fixed-base - they could find you.

Just an FYI - maybe for future use. But 'ham' is not an acronym like NSA or FBI - it's never written in all caps. Correct usage would be Ham, ham or even Amateur Radio.
Also, you are correct on the radio location implications. Finding a fixed station is trivial. Even a low power station. Finding a moving station only slightly more difficult, but eminently doable even with minimal resources. Just takes equipment actually designed for that purpose and in this century instead of simplistically body nulling an

They'd still pick up the carrier - they couldn't tell what you were saying, but they could track where it was coming from. If you want to evade tracking you could use something like very broadband, rapidly-hopping spread spectrum - that would certainly get in the way of any tracking efforts, but it would also need a lot more specialised equipment and skill.

CB Radio === Total waste of a good ham band. Would/should have given them something above 6 meters where linears would have been of extremely limited value. But, as it stands we bid you a fond farewell 11 meters...

You mean the ham bands where you're not allowed to discuss anything political, not allowed to swear or basically have an opinion on anything even slightly controversial except who's going to win best tomatoes at this years vegetable growers competition?

Yeah, who needs CB eh?

No offence , but the ham bands are for old men with nothing to talk about except their radios and gardens. CB back in the day was far more vibrant.

Obscenity and talking in code is legally frowned upon, but almost everything else is fair game as long as it's not business related on the ham bands, at least between two US stations. International communications are usually limited to technical discussions or communications of a personal nature (how the kids are doing in school, the weather etc), but if you think about it, that makes good sense. Most hams do stick to noncontroversial topics, but that's not legally required. I've heard some pretty heated

"You mean the ham bands where you're not allowed to discuss anything political, not allowed to swear or basically have an opinion on anything even slightly controversial except who's going to win best tomatoes at this years vegetable growers competition?"Wow that sounds great. The combination of profanity, political opinion, and "controversial" subjects usually means an idiot.

CB radio at 27 MHz has been around since 1958. The radios were cheap --- remain cheap --- and have significant usable range without the use of repeaters.

CB radio survives because the cell phone isn't the answer to every problem.

Ham Radio: When all else fails, it works. I've never had an issue finding assistance on the ham bands. Even my unlicensed wife managed to get help by using my radio once. On the ham bands, it's about emergency communication and community service. They are there to help.

CB? Good luck finding somebody who 1. cares and 2. knows how to get you help when your cell phone dies. Last time I listened to CB it was a pile of mindless operators who where jawing all the time and never listening. Heaven help you if y

HAM radio has long irritated me -- because while I completely see the value in people forming clubs to learn to use it, and value in cooperation so the bands can be used constructively? I think getting federal govt. involved in it was a HUGE mistake.

I don't care how "easy" the licensing has become. The idea I should have to earn (and pay for) a license before I have the privilege of transmitting over the airwaves disgusts me. I was always very interested in the hobby, even purchasing a hand-held HAM radio

HAM radio has long irritated me -- because while I completely see the value in people forming clubs to learn to use it, and value in cooperation so the bands can be used constructively? I think getting federal govt. involved in it was a HUGE mistake.

So you don't think the federal government has any right to regulate the use of radio spectrum? I think you are gravely mistaken. Radio spectrum space is a national resource that needs to be managed at the federal level or chaos would be the result. Literally nothing would work like it does now. Your cell phone, your GPS receiver, your WiFi router, the radio in your car and a whole host of things would be hit or miss, if they worked at all. The FCC is necessary. In fact, it was the FCC that created CB, a

CB is very useful on the road. I don't transmit much at all and usually don't even connect my mic, but it's great for traffic monitoring.

With the advent of cell phones most of the idiots moved off CB. Having a "public" frequency rather than yet another ham band used by a few gummers to chat
about each others piles is a handy thing during disasters etc. Keeps public comms and hamspace separate.

Historically, the CB spectrum used to be part of the Ham allocation. So it got taken from the gummers in the first place... But you missed my point.

I do not begrudge the creation of CB radio, I do however question the selection of the spectrum for CB. There was no need to put it in the HF spectrum and should have been moved up above 6 meters. There would have been a lot less trouble with CB because they would have been limited to spectrum that was a lot less subject to long distance propagation, making

Packet radio is done every single day on HF on up. With APRS, you can get messages from one coast to the other and back again without any internet or phone connection.

If you DO have an Internet connection, http://www.aprs.fi/ [www.aprs.fi] even shows you where all of the beacons, digipeaters, and stations are at a given time, and allows you to see all of the packets that are sent.

It's a great idea, I'll accept that, it's also not new - this has existed in some commercial form one way or the other (various calculators could communicate images & chat freely via the airwaves, Nintendo DS could also seek players within a certain range to do some picto-chatting or game with each other). Radio Amateurs have done this since the 80s, me too... I did it with a Commodore 64 + a home made 1-transistor modem and a walkie talkie, worked like a charm, but hey...it's good to see the kids of today doing something else than chatting on the internet.

1). You may want to check with the laws of your country, transmitting on most bands are illegal and could potentially disturb or disrupt ambulance communication, police or other important communications. Becoming a licensed Radio Amateur the legal way, is a good step in the right direction.

2). There are existing options you can use to chat & send files via radio today, Ham Radio enthusiasts knows all about this, visit your local (ARRL or equal ham-radio club in your neck of the woods).

3). If you want to chat worldwide, you could get a shortwave radio - or satellite antenna with the appropriate transceiver and a packet modem, with this - you can chat digitally, send pictures, send files as long as you have a radio amateur license to do so. Basically you need this to operate on the bands, in most countries you can listen in on radio amateurs communicating via packet-radio without a license, but you DO NEED A LICENSE TO TRANSMIT.

There are many more things you can do, there are a lot of commercially available radios, digital radios and much more. And none of them require the internet.

On 1, how honest is the "it will interfere with emergency services" reason? I've heard police in particular have unofficially switched to cell phones for sensitive information. And I'd imagine that there are always people willing to sell the government new and improved technology to "protect" against nefarious "terrorists" who might theoretically stage an attack and then mess with ambulances (and the lobbyists would of course assure everyone that this was 800% likely to happen.)

On 1, how honest is the "it will interfere with emergency services" reason? I've heard police in particular have unofficially switched to cell phones for sensitive information. And I'd imagine that there are always people willing to sell the government new and improved technology to "protect" against nefarious "terrorists" who might theoretically stage an attack and then mess with ambulances (and the lobbyists would of course assure everyone that this was 800% likely to happen.)
I'm just wondering if that's actually a nonsense argument the FCC uses to hold onto every bit of power they have. But I know nothing about it, which is why I'm asking.

It depends on what frequency you are transmitting on. If you're on the same frequency, you may be interfering. I think a lot of larger cities are using the same type of radio technology - radios that support frequency hopping. They hop channels so fast that they are very difficult to jam without blanketing a huge swath of the available spectrum. More than likely any switch to cell phones would be to prevent the "sensitive" conversation from being recorded by their government agency. You wouldn't want t

On 1, how honest is the "it will interfere with emergency services" reason? I've heard police in particular have unofficially switched to cell phones for sensitive information.

It is honest. Public safety is all up in VHF,UHF, and the 700/800mhz bands. Other then going to digital voice (P25 mostly) there hasn't been much change in the tech. Its just radio.

Cops may use cellphones for sensitive stuff but dispatch and calls for help still use radio. Ambulances still use normal radios and "MED" channels in the clear to talk to doctors on the way to hospitals. FD's use normal low power portables while on site working a fire. If they get stuck that is how they call for help.If a boater

The reason the ham service cannot innovate like this is that to be a worldwide service it has to operate by rules that are a lowest common denominator of all the rule sets imposed by all the countries in which it operates.

See, when I was a kid, we had this thing called the postal service. It was great. If you had a piece of paper, a writing implement, and a stamp, you could communicate without even needing a computer, let alone a phone or internet. It was even possible to encrypt your communication using a variety of methods so that even if intercepted it wouldn't be obvious that it was some form of secure communication, let alone actually be read by the man in the middle. There were even good methods of detecting if communication had been intercepted, which this new-fangled method lacks. And yeah, there were even people who played chess via this method.

If these kids are gonna reinvent the wheel, they should at least make it work as well as the old wheel.

And to cleanse yourself of the ads with autoplaying sound, you can visit the GitHub page itself.

Implying Slashdot isn't equally guilty of the same damn charge. About a week ago, while indulging myself in my daily fix while on my cellphone, I'll be damned if an ad on this very site (Slashdot) not only showed a video ad but the damn thing even autoplayed. I was not logged in at that moment so I can't confirm if it would have affected me while logged in.

"I'll be damned if an ad on this very site (Slashdot) not only showed a video ad but the damn thing even autoplayed"

Not to defend the crappy code (it's been crappy from day one and unlikely to improve) the other point of failure here is your browser. You should be able to configure it to pass on any website suggestions that involve executing "active content" without your explicit approval. Which is necessary for a large and growing portion of the web, I am afraid, certainly not just slashdot.

...I mean, good luck with that. That's pretty old-school, not sure it'll catch on, even in places where in really should. But hey, friends have iphones that need more charging than my startac did, and that was in the days when phone chargers could charge a phone and a second battery concurrently. So what do I know?

First off, in a war zone where there is anarchy, "everything is legal" unless the local warlord or the country or entity firing bombs in your direction says otherwise.

Second, during times of disaster many communication rules are waived, particularly on frequencies that don't cross national boundaries and which don't cause harm to other emergency or government services.

Third, there are unlicensed frequencies that can be used for ad-hoc metro-area connections if you have good directional antenna. CB radio wo

Most posters here seem not to have read the details on the Github page, and are missing the point.

This is a way to have encrypted point-to-point communication or (in some cases) network using any radio (or other) transmission equipment that will transmit/receive audio signals and allow you to tap-into the analog audio circuit of the transmitter and receiver. You could use it with:

It just defines a common protocol and means of modulation/demodulation.

They take a whole lot of words to say this, and throw in a lot of revolutionary rhetoric.

And yes, it's very similar to amateur packet radio, except encrypted. So, lots of existing code to draw from.

It's well within the capability of any PC or smartphone today. Although I let my ham license lapse many years ago, I do have a couple of receivers squirreled away somewhere, and a few years ago I experimented with listening-in on amateur packet radio. You just run the output from your receiver into the input of a Soundblaster card (I SAID this was a few years ago...) and the application handles the decoding.

An interesting side-note: If you're near an airport, you can use similar software to decode VHF ACARS transmissions. (The kind that hasn't helped much in locating MH370). Just install some open-source software, hook your scanner up to your PC, tune to the right frequency, and it turns the squawks into somewhat-readable messages.

It's biggest drawback is it's biggest strength, IMO. It DOESN'T define a common frequency, some complex frequency-hopping or spread-spectrum scheme, or even common transmission media. It would be extremely hard for it to gain critical mass. On the other hand, it means there are an awful lot of places one would have to look to find it. It's up to whatever group that wants to communicate to settle on a transmission media and (if applicable) frequency.

Me and my group of peers have been experimenting with this for a long while. We were on IRC via telnet over packet radio and drop to the max distance to our setups. Fluid chat was impossible as the massive delay and data transfer rate was vastly sub par. I was complementing doing a project using a transceiver modal in the 433mhz range with a LNA (Low noise amplifier) and a custom designed directional antenna or a 2.4ghz transceiver using the nrf24l01. This would be controlled via a AVR micro controller to h

Something like "talk" might be better where you could actually see what people were typing as they were typing it. I always enjoyed that, it gave you a better feeling of being in direct contact with the remote person.

There's something like this already working: SailMail. [sailmail.com] This is email for sailors, using a network of small radio stations around the world that talk to boats and to each other. It's very slow by modern standards; it makes dial-up look fast. It's strictly email, being a store and forward system. But it's a cheap, effective way to get a message to or from a small sailboat in the middle of an ocean. Coverage is worldwide. People have sailed around the globe without losing connectivity.

...because they're too greedy. Let's go down the list of what I've read here so far:

1a. CB radio: this band, 11 meters, was formerly an amateur radio band and was taken away to make the CB band. It became the total morass it is now when they stopped licensing it.

1b. This also shows what happens to a band in the absence of regulation and licensing. You can get away with this in the ISM portions of the microwave bands due to the massive propagation losses; this was originally the thought for using 11 meter

I was active with ax.25 packet radio 20 years ago. What is actually useful is the ability to do this on HF radio. Here in South Texas I can connect to a gateway node somewhere in the country practically at any time and get a message out. Since the gateways are sometimes several hundred miles away, it would be impervious to any local disaster, provided I can get 12v at a few amps to run my gear.

Armature Extra here, how can I help you get licensed? It's not that hard and these days you don't even need to learn Morse code like I had too. Entry level license requires only basic understanding of Ohms Law and Power calculations, a little about RF safety and some basic things about the rules (like what privileges your license gives you, who the FCC and ITU are.)

Great hobby with lots of interesting things to look at. We do community service like weather spotting for the NWS, event and emergency communications. Don't like talking on the radio? There are lots of computer based things to play with, Digital modes like PSK, packet or HSMM stuff. We have software defined radios you can build and program too. I'll bet we can find something of interest for you to play with.

Don't like taking tests? Well, what if I told you all the questions and the correct answers are published in advance and the test is multiple choice. 35 questions are asked and you only need 26 right. You can practice online (usually for free) and know almost for sure if you will pass or not before taking the test. Tests are likely given regularly and very close to you, no matter where you live and cost $15 for as many as you can take and pass. Pass all three to get your Extra and enjoy the full set of Armature privileges available. If you pass, your license will be good for life as long as you keep requesting renewal every 10 years (renewals are currently free if you file yourself online).

Don't be giving it away man. Anonymous has always been a good way to identify the anarchists who aren't fit to continue being anarchists. LOIC was great for pinpointing the gullible and getting them off the internet.